Escape to the Safehouse
by iKon Shabazz
Summary: Dark Carnival: Nick's own narration of the events to reaching Dark Carnival while having to rush the hill and shindig. Enjoy, this was for a class. I apologize for any and all inaccuracies


Connor M Scovil

Started: September 7th, 2010?

It was a dark evening at Whispering Oaks, and the wind carried over the sounds of carnival music left on for Lord knows how long, singing it's mockingly joyful soundtracks over the faint sounds of a distant Witch weeping like a lost child, and the mindless moans of the horde now unaware of our presence. Before the Infection, this dump was filled with spoiled little kids and their overweight parents eating sugar-coated crap while throwing up their overpriced food on the roller coaster. Now, it's a shell of what it once was; the controls for the merry-go-round were all but abandoned, the wood swanboats in the tunnel of love were rotting away by the moisture in the air and the leftover water on the ground, and sludging around the ferris wheel was probably some giant boomer in a stretched out black tube top waiting to vomit on what I hope will be Ellis; it's hard getting puke out of your suit.

God I hate this place.

"Yo Nick," Coach whispered to me, who noticed I was completely zoned out, his booming voice snapping me back to the hillside we were hiding on. "You ready?" Coach was a big fellow, bald, fat, black and looked like he could outcharge a tank and eat him afterwards if it tasted like a cheeseburger. He was carrying an axe, stained and dripping with the blood and bits of flesh off of that Witch that nearly ripped Rochelle into tiny pieces after she accidentally shot it in the leg. Now it's body's floating in that marsh below without a head.

"Yeah, I'm ready," I told him, with a my charming smile (if I do say so myself). "And I hope you're ready, cause it's not like we're runnin' to the meatburger stands."

"Shut up, Nick," Coach growled. Whenever someone brings up the topic of food while he's hungry, it's one quick road to getting on Coach's bad side.

Ellis loaded up the last rounds of his SPAS-12 into the barrel, and flipped off the safety. "Ready," he started off in that annoyingly upbeat Southern drawl of his, and that cocky smile. This kid must really think he's indestructible. "Oh man, this reminds me of the time me and my friends were playin' paintball, and fired what he thought to be paintball rounds at my buddy Keith, but—"

"Ellis, sweetie, can this wait?"  
"Okay."

Rochelle was the only person I can consistently stand in this group, mainly because she can shut Ellis up quicker than I can, though not in the lovably sarcastic style that's all my own. Don't think that I hate Ellis, I don't, but if I hear one more goddamned story about 'his buddy Keith,' I'm going to throw this bile jar at him and watch as my headache in human form is eaten alive.

"Okay, so," Ellis began again, exiting from Story mode to some kind of serious mode, though the accent makes it tough to regard this mechanic as anything more intelligent than someone who voted for David Duke. "We're gonna run up this hill, and make a mad dash for the safe house up ahead?"

"No Ellis," I said with a healthy amount of sarcasm, "We're going to run up this hill and head over to see if the burger stand still has anything good."

"Finally you said something I can get behind…"

"Shut up, Coach."

I cleaned a bit of the muck off of my M4, and on Coach's call, we ran right up the hill, slipping and sliding on the wet grass of the recent rain, into a group of seven zombies. They weren't chargers, thank God. Otherwise we'd be sent flying back into the swamp! Nah, just a bunch of regular zombies, who upon taking notice of us, bum rushed us without notice or care of our weaponry. Coach easily, with his powerful arms and the quarter-ton of stomach put behind his swing, decapitated three of them, Rochelle had his back, taking a crowbar she found back on the highway and making the zombie apocalypse look like the next installment of Half-Life 2. I, personally, didn't feel like wasting bullets, so I decided to club 'em with the butt of my M4A1. A couple smacks to the head and those things go down real fast.

Then, I heard a car alarm go off.

Apparently, when Ellis blasted the head off of some infected redneck woman, the blast from the SPAS-12 went through the skull and out the other side… smashed through the window of a car whose battery just didn't want to die, and set off the screaming noise that was the car alarm. And loud, blaring noises attract our lovely friends who are just so hungry for our company.

And yay for us; that meant the Horde was coming! Our spirits _just went soaring _as we heard a collective roar in the distance, and the stomping of quick-footed zombies headed our way like an NBA championship riot. And I swear, if I see a Charger running towards me, I'm going to kill that hick with his own hat if possible.

"Ellis; what the _fuck?_" Was all I could say, which was all I really wanted to say, because despite the fact it was a complete accident, I like to be a complete jerk while my life is in imminent danger.

"I'm sorry," he yelled over the unnecessarily loud siren, "It's not _my _fault this gun is so badass that it goes through a zombie head!"

"Both of you," Coach roared over sirens and shouting, "Can it and RUN!"  
At this point, I can safely say our plan was either going to be completed through sheer luck and we'd make it to the safe house with at least a few limbs intact, or we'll be ripped apart by a bunch of zombies pissed off by the stupid car alarm. We booked it, man. I ran faster than I did when I was being chased by the cops in New York City, probably because they weren't trying to _eat me _back then. But I digress; to make it short, we all ran faster than even we knew we could run. Hell, somehow that giant tub of cheeseburger fat wrapped around a former football player rushed right past us like lightning and made it in before us, demanding us to, 'Get movin.'

Like that wasn't the plan I had in mind.

As I ran, with about eighty zombies a few yards behind me running to say hello, I couldn't imagine what those other guys at the bridge had been through. They hadn't even finished their trek across the country, and they came from freakin' Pennsylvania! And those three lost their one guy, uh… Will was it? I don't care, but it made me realize that probably, out of the four that were here, only one or two of us were going to make it to safety.

And I swear one of them's gonna be me.

Before I was able to dive into the safe house, I felt a powerful force push me town onto my stomach, like someone threw a large rock from the roof down at my back. Great; I'm being pinned by a Hunter. Those were one of the worst zombies out there; it was like the Jockey, except instead of trying to drive you off a roof or lead you to a group of zombies, the Hunter cut out the middle man and straight away began trying to rip you apart with their sharp, claw-like hands.

Thank God Ellis was right behind me, and took no time grabbing his Samurai Sword (how we keep finding those is anybody's guess) and hacking the Hunter's body in half from the shoulder to the hip. Other than the disgustingly warm feeling of blood on my body, whether it be my own or the Hunter's, I gotta admit, I owe that kid a lot. He helped me up, and hurriedly ran with me into the safe house. I would've patted him on the back and thanked him, but Ellis had a kind of stupid grin that really pissed me off (you know the type, right?), so I decided against feeding his already giant ego.

Rochelle, however, barely made it in with her life. I couldn't imagine how she did it; that woman only had a crowbar and a pistol, and after being tackled by a Jockey, I watched in disbelief as she had the focus to take the pistol and blast its fucking head off. Didn't she work for the news? Anyways, with that kind of determination, as a gentleman, I had to help her out a little, but since I was low on ammo, only a little, so I shot the zombie closest to grabbing her, its forearm shredded out of its elbow by the flurry of military-grade bullets before it could pull Rochelle to her death. Thanks, US Army, for leaving your weapons everywhere.

I pulled Ro in as Coach slammed the door shut and locked it with a steel bar brought in by its previous occupants. The safehouses we've been using have been extremely secure, and this one was no exception, for when Ro finally dived in with few seconds to spare, Coach barely had time to close the door behind her as a flood of zombies, like a giant battering ram, slammed themselves against the door with a loud **BANG, **all in vain, as most just fell back or had their arms stuck in between the bars of the door windows. Coach finally slammed the metal bar down, placing the final barricade on the door; we were safe.

"You guys ain't so damn bad!" I told them, sitting down upon the concrete floor, instinctively checking my pocket for that carton of cigarettes that I never had. "Now all we need to do is do the same exact thing all the way to New Orleans!"

No biggie, just a few hundred miles away; after all we've been through, at least we're not heading all the way to San Francisco, right?


End file.
